Money — it’s the root of all evil. Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Or at least an unfair advantage.

That’s the gist of the liberals’ creed and justification for their war on wealth. The other half of their view holds that the poor are innocent victims of life’s rigged game.

Their narrative of evil winners and noble losers clears the way for self-heroic redeemers. They will deliver social justice by meting out punishment and spreading the wealth around. Their virtue entitles them to power.

It sounds like a comic-book view of life, but it’s the reality of liberalism today. And thanks to the de Blasio administration, New Yorkers are getting a bitter taste of its divisive nature. So much so that talk about quitting Gotham is surging in some circles.

One friend says 10 wealthy people have told him they are leaving and another says disgusted New Yorkers bought $1 billion in residential property in Florida since the November election. The Sunshine State confers an automatic tax cut of about 12 percent because it has no city or state income tax, nor does it have an inheritance tax.

Beyond taxes, the mayor’s open hostility is a factor. His insulting treatment of former Mayor Bloomberg at the inauguration remains a cloud over him. As one affluent woman, a self-described liberal, told me, “De Blasio hates me, so I hate him.” She doesn’t personally know him, but draws her conclusion from his words and deeds.

The central problem is the mayor’s childish view of wealth.

Taking a page out of Barack Obama’s playbook, de Blasio casts his push for a tax hike on those earning over $500,000 as a moral imperative.

“I believe it’s time to ask the wealthy to do a little more,” he said last year. He paints taxes as a matter of giving back, as though the money was taken from others.

The sneering suggestion that everyone with money is somehow guilty of something is not a surprise coming from a man who spent his honeymoon on an illegal trip to Castro’s Cuba. What is a surprise is his lack of appreciation for the impact of wealth on city revenues and the importance of philanthropy to the arts and education.

As Bloomberg often noted, about 5,000 very wealthy families paid 30 percent of the city’s income tax. Losing even a few of them means significantly less money for filling potholes and hiring cops.

Billions in philanthropy support the arts, ranging from local dance groups to the flagship institutions that define New York as a world-class city. Nearly half of the Metropolitan Opera’s operating fund comes from donations, which last year reached $143 million.

The biggest change in the Bloomberg era was an explosion of charitable dollars to help fund the charter-school movement, and that seems to infuriate de Blasio. One reason might be that it threatens his political base. Charters teach 70,000 kids, and if they keep expanding and succeeding, they will be an existential threat to the unions that back him.

Eva Moskowitz, the most prominent and successful charter leader, has borne the brunt of his fury. The mayor is angry that Moskowitz augments her 22 Success Academy schools public funds with millions more from hedge-fund backers. “There is no way in hell that Eva Moskowitz should get free rent,” he thundered last year.

In office, he attacked her compensation of about $475,000, complaining that it is more than he and his first deputy make together. He seems not to care about the many black and Latino children being helped.

Encouraged by Bloomberg, real-estate titans, financiers and trust-funders opened their wallets to schools in extraordinary ways. One generous giver estimates that hundreds of millions of private dollars have gone to groups like KIPP, Harlem Children’s Zone, Harlem Village Academies, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First, PAVE Academy and other educational nonprofits.

One of them, the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, founded by developer Dan Rose in 1989, uses everything from chess to tutoring to college tours to put area students on the path to a productive life. Saluting Rose’s roster of Saturday-morning enrichment programs, Harvard scholar and educator Skip Gates once jokingly thanked him “for bringing Hebrew school to Harlem.”

That was a nod to the unspoken truth about educational philanthropy — the money comes predominately from whites, many of them Jewish, and benefits predominately nonwhite children and families.

There is nothing like it in the world, and for de Blasio to threaten or even discourage that remarkable generosity is not just dumb. It is unforgivable.

Romney said it: Vlad to worse

Who is going to be the first to apologize to Mitt Romney? The president, the vice president or Hillary Rodham Clinton?

All three mocked the GOP presidential candidate in 2012 when he called Russia “our number one geopolitical foe.”

Obama said his opponent was “stuck in a Cold War mind warp.” Clinton, then secretary of state, offered her two cents, saying, “In many of the areas where we are working to solve problems, Russia has been an ally.”

Biden added that “This is not 1956.”

Actually, it is 1956 — in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The Bear is on the march, sending in thousands of troops to the Crimea region of Ukraine. The unrest that toppled the president left an opening, and the mini-invasion probably means Putin plans to annex part of the country.

Only Obama and his ship of fools were surprised. The military move came less than 24 hours after Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, said Russia promised it would “respect” Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Well, comrade, that depends on how you define “respect.”

And you can almost hear the howls of laughter in Moscow after Obama warned that “there will be costs for any military intervention.” Putin has Obama’s number, which is zero when it comes to the Great Game.

As for Romney, just several weeks ago he said: “I think Putin has outperformed our president time and time again on the world stage.”

Nobody is mocking him now.

Ronan’s yet to test his ‘medal’

In a victory for long-time sacrifice, hard work and meritorious achievement, Ronan Farrow won journalism’s prestigious Cronkite Award for Excellence.

OK, it’s true his MSNBC show was only three days old, which means his career spans three hours, including commercials.

But he deserves a lifetime prize just for being the child of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen — or Frank Sinatra, if rumors are true. Either way, he is a poor, little rich kid.

Albany corruption a Shel game

You have to hand it to Sheldon Silver. When it comes to speaking nonsense with a straight face, the Democratic Assembly speaker has few peers.

He denounced subpoenas issued by Gov. Cuomo’s Moreland Commission as a “fishing expedition,” saying the only way to end corruption is for taxpayers to fund political campaigns.

Translation: Taxpayers must bribe politicians if they want them to stop stealing!